07.20.11
Buy American
Cigar box guitars and foot stompers were invented by folks in the poor south. Like the harmonica, they were musical instruments for anyone to play — even without formal musical education of any kind. Keep in mind that, strictly speaking, modern cigar box guitars aren’t the standard old instrument. Addition of electronics, piezo or humbucking pick-ups, makes them acoustic/electric.
Cigar box guitars are tuned to open chords and the folk blues made by them works off of drones and slides. It’s an easy genre of music to fall into and very addicting. The instruments go from quiet to swampy to intense racket very simply.
It’s not a big leap at all to go from a six string electric to one of these old three or four-string old time devices (particularly if you’re at all familiar with taking a string off a standard guitar to do the Keith Richards 5-string open G chord thing).
As is fairly obvious in the video, they reward simplicity and music-making for the sake of emotional expression and sincerity.
On the web a number of people have enthusiastically turned to cigar box guitar making. They’re fanatical about it and you can spend a couple hours wading through photos of great-looking wood box instruments for show or sale on these websites. Here’s one fabulous example.
They’re definitely not for the plutocracy. Yet. Mostly. That’s a pretty good thing and it would be a shame for shoeshine boys in the lower reaches of the upper class to stink it up. Symbolically they fit with most of the rest of the nation being sent to the poor house for the sake of the ruling class.